Retail paint stores typically sell numerous types of paint products and accessories, as well as a variety of other home improvement supplies. To best serve their customers' needs, retail paint stores offer a wide variety of merchandise for customer selection. In order to display a wide variety of merchandise for sale, sufficient display space must be available throughout the store. Unfortunately, display space is also required for a variety of other uses which are unrelated to displaying merchandise for sale and thus do not contribute to increasing sales. As a result, available display space in retail stores is a valuable and limited resource.
In the past, valuable display space has been used for displaying sample materials, such as sample paint color cards in paint stores. Display panels are typically used for displaying such sample materials. The display panels are mounted on the walls of the store, or on mounting board which would otherwise support shelves for displaying merchandise. For ease of customer accessibility, the panels are generally positioned at eye level so that the samples are readily visible and within the customers' reach. When positioned in such visible and accessible locations, the display panels occupy highly valuable space for displaying merchandise for sale to customers.
Additional display space has also been used to provide employee work stations. Work stations are required in retail paint stores for performing tasks such as tinting paint products purchased by customers. In the past, such employee work stations have been located on additional counter space or on display shelves. Since the equipment required for tinting paint must be positioned at eye level and within the grasp of paint store employees operating the equipment, the tinting equipment and work station also occupy desirable display space which would otherwise be available for displaying merchandise for sale. Because space for displaying merchandise is limited and in such demand, it is undesirable to use highly visible and accessible space for purposes unrelated to the sale of merchandise, such as for displaying sample materials or supporting tinting equipment.